Diary of M by Wayne Heavey - Short, Drama - Inspired By a study carried out between 2005 - 2012. The Diary Of M follows a young man struggle battling with mental illness. 23 pages - pdf, format

Wayne...Wayne...WAYNE!

Sorry...

Hey, when there are typos and grammatical isues in the logline, you know what's going to follow.

Then, you have typos on your title page.

After reading your opening Slug and the line that followed, which completely restates your Slug, I was all done.  If you want to be taken seriously, you have to at least throw out some effort and I'm sorry, but I don't see much here.

Hope you get invovled in SS, by reading and commenting on other scripts. If you do that, you'll be amazed how many peeps will jump into your script(s) and offer help.

Good luck.

Hey Wayne, good to see one of my Twitter pals on the boards, here. I'll get to this later tonight. But things I noticed as a scrolled through...

Your action blocks are a bit intimidating. I'm consistently seeing 5-line paragraphs and bigger throughout. May chase away some readers.

I don't mind the all bold face -- I believe that Nightcrawler script (from Script Shadow) that Jake Gyllenhaal is doing was all bold face. But some here may see it as a distraction.

-- Michael

Hello Wayne,

I think this is the first script I have seen on SS from the ROI.

I like the fact that you're attempting to tackle a very serious and current topic and one that badly deserves attention both locally and worldwide.

As Michael said, the bold type is a little harsh on the eye. You also need to proof read your work before you submit it.

Some of the dialogue exchanges, while sounding natural and colloquial, need a little more to work in a film context. Dialogue, should be more than just a questions and answers exchange - you need to express things that unique to your character, use subtext, lie, be defensive etc etc.

I'm not sure if Mark VO helps - it's better to SHOW than to explain - the VO makes it sound like a HSE advert.  

For this to have any impact - you need to remove the epilogue and SUPER at the end and SHOW the effect your protagonists death has on those who failed him.


If you engage your reader/viewer EMOTIONALLY by what you SHOW, it will have much greater gravity.

The message should be something like - people are sometimes only as effective as the system they find themselves in, like the doctor and garda, so the system needs to change.

Hope this helps,

Kind Regards,

Eoin

Hi Wayne. As has been said by Eoin, I think that you should be more visual with your writing. Dialogue's important, too, but if one who reads your work can't really imagine a scene in their head as they work their way through your writing, then your job has been left incomplete. He's right, those emotional drawstrings are very important. You want to, ideally, take people on a rollercoaster ride with your work. Up, then down, then for a loop, then slowly... ease them over the edge into a steep drop and another series of heartstopping loops... and that all needs to happen in a synergistic meeting between dialogue and imagery. Twist us up, wring our nerves, tie our hearts in knots! Do all you can to make us never forget what you've written, Wayne.

You can do it, so all the best to you!

Hey Guys,


Sadly I sent two scripts in. One was proof read. They other one was not. The feedback though about the dialogue is why I sent the script in. I personally felt it was too long and i wanted to see did others too.

I will work on trying to fragment the dialogue and put in some more pictures that adds more tension to the story.

Thank You for reading.

Hi Wayne,

I've also made the mistake of sending in the wrong draft before, so know how that feels.

Breaking up dialogue would improve this script greatly. I remember reading in McKee's Story that if a speech is too long then you should break it into beats, so that you have the character pause and then comment on what they've just said. This keeps it fresh rather than becoming a droning monologue. The example he used was in a long speech of  Salieri's in Amadeus.

you should check it out - it's really helpful.

good luck and all th best

James

Hello Wayne

Alot has been said already so i wont repeat tho...i will say that you need to write more lean

and the dialogue does need more soul into it. it was more like ping pong (question
and then answer) also take out the V.O.

i will also comment about your story ...it is very interesting...health care does
need more fixing (you have a great idea) but it was hard for me to get into the story...

hope this helps and good luck with your writing

Ugo